The grants funding the project require that it be completed by March 31, but it should be wrapped up much sooner than that.

"We're hoping we can be done before the holidays," said Stefan Reinold, senior forestry resource specialist for Parks and Open Space. "We hope to be done by Christmas.

"It's contingent upon weather. If the helicopter can't fly, they're not going to be able to work. We're hoping we can have this knocked out fairly quickly."

The goal of the county initiative is to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. Boulder County has already seen one severe fire earlier this year with the Cold Springs Fire, which destroyed eight homes on 528 acres outside Nederland.

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Trees — primarily ponderosa pine — will be coming down from two targeted parcels within the preserve totaling 189 acres. They will be ferried by K-MAX helicopter from where they are felled to landing sites within the preserve, then converted to wood chips to be trucked out to the biomass burners that heat the Boulder County Jail and the Parks and Open Space department's transportation maintenance complex.

The $1.3 million project coincides with — but is independent of — maintenance and repairs to the Boulder Water Treatment Facility, which was blamed for some Boulder residents recently experiencing murky or cloudy water coming out of their taps.

That cloudiness was attributed by officials to the presence of calcium, which gets added to city water at the end of the treatment process. Crews doing prep work in advance of construction at the treatment plant had stirred up calcium at the bottom of the water storage tank.

Work at the plant is to continue for the next year to 18 months, according to the city public works department.

Protecting the Betasso Water Treatment Facility and three hydroelectric plants is no small part of the Betasso mitigation project. The Betasso Preserve surrounds the city facility on the north and the west.

"We had a replacement value on those of over $133 million" if they were destroyed in a fire, Reinold said.

'Necessary evil'

Tree felling for the hazardous fuels project will start Oct. 10, and helicopter and processing operations are set to launch Oct. 24. Some equipment mobilization may take place before that date.

The county advises that management activity is going to be visible not only through much of the preserve, but also adjoining areas, including the Bummers Rock, Canyon Loop and Betasso Link trails.

"Significant operational activity" and related noise will be evident directly adjacent to both Betasso Preserve parking areas from the nearby project staging areas, according to the county's website.

Work will be underway from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, depending on the weather.

"It's a necessary evil," Mike Barrow, advocacy director for the group, said in an email. "The western United States suffers from over a century of fire suppression, and in that time we've peppered the hills of Boulder County with structures that people care about deeply.

"Everybody needs to come to grips with the reality that we will either have projects like these to reduce the fuel loads for decades or deal with fires that will be so deadly dangerous that the only thing we can do is get out of the way and rise from the ashes that are left behind. BCPOS is responsibly managing our public lands doing projects like these."

The project requirements call for trail-side exclusions from thinning, in order to reduce erosion potential and to discourage the proliferation of user-created trails.

There will be no tree removal for 6 feet on either side of all trails in the project area, to maintain the effective corridor. Sections of the Bummers Rock Trail and the Betasso Link Trail will have additional exclusions from thinning due to increased sensitivity to erosion or so-called social trails.

Despite the Oct. 24 closure, Betasso resident ranger Graham Fowler will be alerting his Twitter followers when the helicopter is not flying after that date due to weather, and visitors will be permitted on the preserve.

Mitigation matters

An Aug. 30 public meeting was attended by about 25 area homeowners who were briefed on the project. But some who did so confessed to still not having a full grasp of its potential impact.

"I think I don't know enough to have a legitimate opinion," said Laurie Rugenstein, who lives on Silver Spruce near the bottom of Sugarloaf and Magnolia roads. "But it was really helpful to go to the meeting, and hear what they are planning to do.

"Fire mitigation is good," she added. "We all know what happens when you don't mitigate."

Rugenstein also said, "People closer to the project are going to feel the impact of the vehicles on the road and the noise, more than we will ... Our neighbors are putting in a new kitchen, so we have vehicles and noise from that. You just have to sort of accept it."

Maryanne Koschier, who also lives on Silver Spruce, did not attend the informational meeting. But she has talked to those who did and has also studied the project on the county's website.

"First, I appreciate that they had an overview meeting," she said. "My real concern is that they stay with the plan, and that it really isn't clear cutting, as was done by the Forest Service on West Magnolia."

Koschier, who characterized her attitude as one of "cautious hopefulness," said, "I understand the larger picture of forest fire mitigation, and can live with the disruption, as long as it is done thoughtfully and carefully and per plan."

Reinold said that would be the case.

"We had a lot of input on this project, from looking at community wildfire protection plans, talking with people at CSU (Colorado State University), talking with people at the Boulder sheriff's office and their fire crew, and that's partly how we designed some of the project," Reinold said.

The hazardous fuels reduction project is part of the Betasso Preserve Management Plan. It is partially funded through a total of $962,000 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's pre-disaster mitigation and hazard mitigation programs, as well as a $100,000 Colorado Forest Restoration grant from the Colorado State Forest Service. The balance will be paid from county Parks and Open Space funds.

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